


Outside the Castle

by KupoWonders



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Acceptance, Angst, Gen, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 18:59:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14921072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KupoWonders/pseuds/KupoWonders
Summary: Sometimes it takes a conversation with yourself (or the person you were created to imitate) to work through what you've done, and figure out who you're going to be. On a familiar beach on Destiny Islands, Riku Replica talks with himself.





	Outside the Castle

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the very end of the Sony E3 Kingdom Hearts 3 trailer.

The other Riku had grown a lot since Castle Oblivion. 

He was larger, more muscular, but his hair was shorter. He’d found new clothes, and he looked like he’d caught more sun too. He was more experienced. They weren’t an equal match anymore – if they fought, he was sure the other him would win. But they looked different enough now that he almost didn’t look like him – someone who hadn’t known what he had looked like before might not have guessed what he was. Might have called him his brother, instead of his replica. 

He didn’t know how he felt about that. 

The other Riku – the real Riku, although it made his chest ache to think of him as such – reclined on the sand, glancing over to him. He was unarmed; they both were, even though the replica wanted to draw his weapon just to have it there, in case the real Riku decided that he was a threat. He didn’t _seem_ like he was going to attack, but Vexen hadn’t seemed like he would agree to make Namine erase his memories. Sora hadn’t seemed like he would be much of a threat. 

The replica didn’t trust his instincts much nowadays. 

“I bet it feels strange being here, huh?” the other Riku said. His voice was different now too – and not just because he was older. There was no aggression in his tone whatsoever, even though the last time they had seen each other they had been fighting to the death. The last time he had seen the other Riku he had been staring up at an artificial sky within the walls of the castle he had lived his entire life inside, feeling his existence slip away from him. He had watched pieces of his very being splinter off of him and float up toward the ceiling-sky, and had been too weak to so much as lift his arms and try to stop them. Shouldn’t he be angry that he survived? Shouldn’t he be offended that he’d dare set foot on this world that he had no real connection to, despite knowing it intimately in his (fake) memories? 

The other Riku didn’t look angry, or offended, or anything but calm, but the replica couldn’t just believe that. He shrugged in response, a crashing wave filling the abrupt silence between them. The waves were louder here than he remembered, but then again he was mere feet away from them. The tide was dangerously close to lapping against his boots – if it came in much further he’d have to find another place to sit. 

The other Riku gave him a small half-smile, and turned his face back to the waves. 

“It feels strange for me to be here,” he admitted, and the replica felt his eyes widen in surprise. 

“This is your world,” he pointed out, voice quiet, and the other Riku nodded once. 

“But I destroyed it, trying to escape from it,” he said. “Everything that’s here now… is only here because Sora and Mickey brought it back. If they hadn’t been there to undo my mistakes, then this world would be gone forever.” He shifted slightly on the sand. “It’s taken a long time for me to feel like I can set foot here again. To feel like I can still call it my home, after everything I’ve done.” He paused, contemplating. “I… I don’t know if you want to hear this, but facing you helped me figure out how to face myself. I’m glad that Castle Oblivion happened.”

The replica scowled – of course he was happy, he’d won. He’d proven himself to be stronger, to be able to wield both darkness and light, while the replica been trapped and toyed with by the only people he’d known. His attempt to claim his own existence, to become more than just the shadow of the real Riku, had ended in failure. He was about to tell the other Riku that, but he was still talking. 

“But I know that isn’t fair of me. You didn’t deserve what happened in Castle Oblivion.” 

He reached down, scooping up a handful of sand. The replica wasn’t sure if he was going to do something with it, or if he was just looking for something to do with his hands while he talked. 

“A while after I got out of the castle, I met Sora’s Nobody. Roxas. I watched him for a while, this kid who was half of Sora but who was fighting to have his own life. At the time, it made me angry – he was hurting Sora, keeping him asleep, and the life he was living didn’t even seem worth it. I didn’t care about how much it meant to him – all I knew was that while he was sitting around eating ice cream every day, my best friend wouldn’t wake up. Eventually we fought, and he was so desperate to have this tiny life, to break away from Sora’s influence… that I finally understood. Roxas deserved to have his own life, to spend it how he wanted to.” His eyes flickered over to the replica. “And so do you.”

The replica was silent for a long moment, searching the other Riku’s face for any hint of insincerity. That wasn’t what he’d expected to hear – that wasn’t what he thought he would say. But the other Riku was watching him now, waiting to see what he would say. The replica looked away from him and toward the ocean instead, wrapping his arms around his knees. 

“I don’t know what life I could have,” he said slowly, hesitantly. He hadn’t really wanted to admit this to himself, but it seemed like he was about to admit it to two of himself. “I was… I was made to hurt you and Sora. I don’t have any real memories. I… I killed one of the people who created me. I don’t know what I can do, or where I can go. The only world I even know how to get to is this one.”

The other Riku hummed, shifting his weight. 

“You could always come back with me,” he offered, and the replica glanced toward him. “We have a tower, on the other side of Twilight Town. You could stay with us for a while, figure out where you might want to go, what you might want to see. We need all the help we can get, but I won’t ask you to fight for us. You can if you want, but I understand if you’ve had enough of fighting other people’s battles.”

The replica furrowed his brow, watching him in disbelief. Was he really offering him a second chance? 

“Who…” he began, speaking the words quietly, “who’s ‘we’?”

“At the moment, me, Sora, Kairi and Lea,” the other Riku said. He hesitated. “Lea… used to be Axel. Before he was recompleted. But he’s changed now, he genuinely wants to help.”

The mention of the name sent spiders skittering across his skin, and the replica grimaced. Axel. The Nobody who had promised him that he could be strong, that he could be real, if he just did what he said and murdered someone in cold blood. The one who’d been complicit in holding Namine prisoner, who hadn’t spoken up to stop his colleagues from tampering with his memories. He had no memories of Axel that were good, and he couldn’t understand how Sora could stand to be in the same room as him. 

“I hurt Sora,” the replica reminded him, and something squeezed his chest as he said it. He’d lied to Sora, knowingly and unknowingly – he’d treated him terribly, when all Sora wanted to do was make sure that his friend was okay. He’d tainted his memories of Riku, he’d led him to believe that he didn’t care… and although they had parted on friendly (or at least not hostile) terms, that didn’t mean anything. He’d still hurt him, and although he’d wanted to be better he had still listened to Axel and murdered Zexion, and had been more than prepared to murder the real Riku despite knowing how much he’d meant to him. 

He'd hurt Sora even though the only memories he’d had were of him and Namine, even though he was one of the only friends he remembered having.

There was no way Sora would be happy to see him. Despite his kind words, his insistence that his existence was real and valid despite having only fake memories, he couldn’t truly believe that. If he turned up, Sora would probably argue against him staying – Sora would be angry and demand he leave, and if Riku told him where he found him then he might somehow forbid him from returning to Destiny Islands, and then he’d have nowhere to go. 

“So did I,” the other Riku pointed out. “Sora doesn’t hold grudges. His heart is too big for that – so long as you’re sorry, Sora will forgive you. And,” he added, after noticing that the replica didn’t look convinced, “he doesn’t remember Castle Oblivion.”

The replica stared. He didn’t remember Castle Oblivion? The replica didn’t really remember anything from before his memories had been replaced – just bits and pieces, fragments that didn’t align properly in his mind, but at least he had those. Then again, Namine had interfered with Sora’s memories for longer than she had with his. 

“Namine,” he said quietly, and the other Riku’s expression faltered. “What happened to Namine?”

He didn’t know if he wanted to see her again. She had stolen away his memories, she had almost shattered his heart when he had acted on the memories and aggression she had implanted inside him. She had interfered with his life and then said she couldn’t do anything to fix it. 

Yet the memory of standing at her side with a wooden sword, swearing to protect her and believing every single word with all his heart, still burned inside him. He knew it wasn’t real – he knew it was another thing she had put inside him to keep him complacent, on the Organization’s orders. But knowing that it wasn’t real didn’t make the warmth in his chest at the memory of her smile disappear – it just made it ache too. 

“Namine was Kairi’s Nobody,” the other Riku said. “She went back to Kairi. So… Kairi might feel like she already knows you.”

“She’d feel like that anyway,” the replica pointed out. “I have your face.”

A nervous smile flickered onto the other Riku’s face, and he scratched at the back of his head in an embarrassed gesture that was extremely Sora-esque. 

“I guess so,” he said. “But Namine’s still in there, with her. She’s sleeping inside Kairi’s heart.”

The replica nodded. That was good enough, he supposed. She wasn’t gone, she was just resting. He wouldn’t have to confront the pain that seeing her would cause, at least not yet.

“We’d all be happy to have you,” the other Riku assured him. “Well, so long as you aren’t planning on attacking us. That would, uh, be pretty embarrassing. But none of us hold anything against you. And I’m sure Lea would appreciate the chance to apologise for what he did – he keeps apologising to Kairi, so much that she’s getting pretty sick of it. So… what do you say? This world is a nice place to stay and all, but it is pretty small.”

The replica watched his face, the sincere, genuine face that was and was not his own. A face that was smiling, not pained or angry or scared, and that was echoed in his voice.

“You’ve accepted yourself,” the replica said softly, and the other Riku nodded. 

“My friends accepted me, despite what I’ve done,” he replied. “I’ve fought to be better. I’m still fighting, but I’ve proved to myself that I have the strength to protect what matters. I’m sure they’ll accept you too.”

The other Riku climbed to his feet, brushing some sand off his clothes before he turned back to the replica and offered his hand. 

“We’ll go together,” he said. “I’m sure Sora and Kairi would love to see you.”

The replica watched his hand, his mind spinning. They could all be friends for real this time. He could fight to be his own person, someone who was separate from the other Riku, without having to destroy him. He could forge his own existence with people there to support him. He could make up for the hurt that he'd caused, by making things a little better for these people. Or he could carry on sitting here, feeling the wind and the heat of the setting sun, and listening to the crashing waves. 

He thought that it would be better to experience these things with other people, instead of on his own. 

“I guess I could try,” he said, and took the other Riku’s hand. This time when he smiled at him, he smiled back. 

He couldn’t wait to see the look on Sora’s face when he realised there were two of them.


End file.
